Introduction

Once you have your research completed for your personal project and your group project, you will need to begin writing news articles. This page will show you the basic ideas for how to get started.

Things to keep in mind before you write

1. Don't try to write about everything. News articles need to be informative, but you are not writing a history book, so only write about the most important facts or ideas
2. Try to keep your article interesting. When people read the news, they want something that matters to them. Try to write in a way that you think will interest other people. Ask yourself: would I find this interesting?
3. When in doubt, look at the news. If you are not sure how to write your article, take a moment and read some news articles online. Try to get an idea of how professionals write and try to use that in your own writing

Elements of a News Article

Before the article

News articles typically begin with a few basic things: title, author, location, date

1. Title - Try to be creative with your title. Think of something that will capture the attention of a reader. Which do you think is better: "Martin Luther Writes 95 Theses" or "Martin Luther Shocks the Catholic Church with his 95 Theses"?
2. Author - this will be your name
3. Location - Where is the story taking place? If there are multiple locations, choose the final location
4. Date - If you are writing your historical news article, you can make up a month and day if you need to, but make sure the year is appropriate

Beginning of the Article

Typically you want to start your article by stating the basic facts. You will add more details later, but for now, just give a quick summary of what your article is going to be about

Take a look at this article from El Pais and notice all the elements that we've discussed:

Body of the Article

You can write your article in many different ways, so in order to help guide you, here are some suggestions that you can use if you want.

1. Quotes - A good article always has some quotes from everyday citizens or someone involved with the story. If you are writing your historical article, obviously you can't ask anyone about it, but maybe you can imagine what someone might say. If you are writing about Martin Luther, maybe you could add a statement from a German citizen or a Catholic priest.

Here is an example from that same news article above. The person quoted here is a secret "source".

1. Box Quote - If you have a sentence from your article that you think is extra important, you can create a box quote. This means that you take the sentence and make a big version of it off to the side of your article. This is another way to catch the attention of readers. IMPORTANT: It may seem odd, but the sentence you turn into a box quote will also be repeated in the article as well. It appears twice in your story

This is what a box quote looks like. It is larger and more bold. You cannot see it in this picture, but that same sentence appears later in the article. Also, as you can see, that sentence is a pretty interesting sentence, isn't it?